Ten years ago, in March 2016, His Holiness Pope Francis issued the encyclical “Amoris Laetitia”, which asks for a renewed pastoral of marriage and family. On the tenth anniversary of this publication, on Friday 27 March at 17h CET, the Federation of Catholic Family Associations in Europe (FAFCE) have organised a Webinar on the current status of the pastoral care for families.
This webinar featured the Most Revd Leo Cushley, Archbishop of of St Andrews and Edinburgh and chair of the commission on Family and Life at the Council of Bishops’ Conferences of Europe (CCEE) and Father Luc Simons, priest of the Diocese of Roermond (The Netherlands) and member of “OpGROEISymposium”(FAFCE Associated organisation).
H. H. Leo Cushley, Archbishop of of St Andrews and Edinburgh and chair of the commission on Family and Life at the Council of Bishops’ Conferences of Europe (CCEE) gave the introductory speech.
Archbishop Cushley humouristicaly explained that the members of the commission on Family and Life, have become some kind of family as their excellent collaboration to promote the nuclear Christian family. Rather than concentrating of on bad news, he noted that young families are looking for some guidance to something real and positive. Reacting on the news that His Holiness Pope Leo XIV have announced a meeting of all bishop’s conferences in October 2026 in order to discuss how to proclaim the Gospel to families today, Mgr Cushley underlined that the method of listening is very positive. Even tough some specific parts of Amoris Laetitia were controversial, most of the interesting parts were ignored by commentators. This tenth anniversary is then a good opportunity to make a worldwide picture of what is needed from families and married couples.
WATCH HERE : FAFCE Webinar on Amoris Laetitia 1/2 – Archbishop Leo Cushley
Father Luc Simons, priest of the Diocese of Roermond (The Netherlands) and member of “OpGROEISymposium” then talked about the pastoral implementation of Amoris Laetitia.
Father Simons first made an interesting comparison between the two main documents of the Catholic Church regarding marriage and family : Familiaris Consortio (1981) and Amoris Laetitia (2016). If their topic is the same, the objectives of the two documents are different and reveal a progressive change of focus from teaching to accompagnying and from anthropology to mercy.
He then explained the main challenges that occured since the last ten years, so during the actual implementation of the Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, underlying that under the current situation, young people are reaching out to priests for a clear theological formation on these topics. A challence in the next decade could be the way to accompany these young people and provide them with the right formation.
Father Simons then shared two practical examples of pastoral care of married couples and families : a marriage preparation in a team of couples and a priest to discuss love, marriage and fertility ; and a gathering of families during weekends. The biggest outcome of families meeting each other being the couples sharing issues of education or faith between each other.
WATCH HERE : FAFCE Webinar on Amoris Laetitia 2/2 – Father Luc Simons
After a Q&A session from the audience, FAFCE President Vincenzo Bassi thanked all the participants and recalled that family networks are always useful as they allow families to exchange on their own topics of interest.
